Letters to the Editor: School choice shouldn’t undo the progress Americans have made

To the editor: As a white kid who attended second and third grades in segregated public schools of Topeka, Kan., from 1952 to 1954, I applaud LZ Granderson’s insightful column.

My Arkansas-born parents never mentioned my unwitting connection to the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. Unsurprisingly, my family’s move to Lincoln, Neb., left me enrolled in all-white schools for the next three years.

Granderson posits a singularly powerful take: “School choice was always a Trojan horse, a rebuke of the Brown decision. It was a system designed to use taxpayer dollars to fund ‘separate but unequal’ schooling in the name of God.”

To which I must say “Amen!”

M. Edward Alston, Santa Monica

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To the editor: I taught in the L.A. Unified School District for 28 years. If an integrated school is failing, why attribute a parent’s decision to pull a child out to racism? Yet that’s exactly what LZ Granderson does.

Parents of all races have the right to pursue a quality education for their children. Let’s stop assuming that racism is the No. 1 reason.

Walt Gardner, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I see that racial discrimination, prejudice and segregation are alive and well in many states of the United States. I’m really beginning to wonder about the “united” part of the name of our country. Integrated schools are the backbone and lifeblood of a democracy, and a nation of freedom and equal opportunity. I attended integrated schools growing up in Southern California — it is what makes America great! Black, brown and white people qualified for colleges and universities out of our high school — from state colleges to Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard — on their own merits.

Segregation, I believe, is a throwback to monarchy, privilege and a class society — the very formula that decimated European society in the 18th and 19th centuries.

A values education and moral education would be the only antidote for human shortcomings and lack of wisdom. It is the stuff of a classical, worldly education. Many people on the planet, I believe, including our country, have no clue.

Chet Chebegia, San Marcos